Looking For Familiarity
by pr3ttygirl
Summary: This is something I wrote for a roleplay audition. It's just a quick Brucas scene. Assuming Brooke applied to Duke, this is a short one-shot of her emotions regarding leaving Tree Hill and having to come to terms with the fact that things have changed.


With no idea where she was headed – okay, that's a lie she tried to convince herself of but miserably failed at doing so. Knowing exactly where she was headed, Brooke Davis pulled on a fitted black t-shirt that stopped just before the hem of it met her low rise jeans and slid her feet into a pair of black wedges. She was out the door and on her way to the rivercourt only minutes later. She hadn't bothered to grab a coat because there was something about the stinging air that made her feel like she wasn't completely unfeeling of everything. Why she was going there, she really had no idea at all. It wasn't really the place she spent all of her time growing up like a lot of Tree Hill's male residents but it was the place where she acquired some of her the most memorable moments of her high school years.

Opting to walk rather than quicken the quest in her baby blue Volkswagen, Brooke tucked her hands away in her pocket. Her slender shaking fingers gripped the white paper envelope in her pocket and refused to let go. The brunette had received a letter from Duke and since the moment she laid her large brown eyes on it, she couldn't shake the angst building up in the pit of her perfectly toned stomach. Getting in to Duke had been her dream as of late. Until last summer, she was sure that she was going to marry a rich guy – unless she got fat – and live on his fortune. But when her clothing line, Clothes Over Bros, began taking flight, Brooke was sure that she had much more potential than she gave herself credit for. Getting into a school with such high acclaim was going to be a long shot and she was well aware of that from the moment she printed out the application but something being a little too difficult never kept her from trying before and it most certainly hadn't in this case.

The walk was relaxing but along the way she'd managed to give herself a few paper cuts from holding onto the little white envelope that would be her ticket out of Tree Hill. Letting a long deep breath escape her crimson lips, Brooke watched as the cold air brought the normally invisible breaths to life and gave them form of some sort. Finally, she reached the rivercourt and caught sight of an all too familiar silhouette perched up on the on the wooden picnic table that served as bleachers.

Lucas Scott. The boy who had her heart but refused to give her his.

Hesitant at first, Brooke slowly approached the boy and pursed her lips together when he finally noticed her presence nearing. Her heart nearly stopped as his eyes met hers and she could feel her cheeks burn – not just from the chill of the December air but from the tension that she ought to have been used to by now. Releasing her lips from her own grip, Brooke offered a small smile that accentuated her dimples and nodded towards the space beside him.

"Do you mind if I-?"

"Wha-? No, not at all."

His voice was a strange tone of distress that she recognized right away. The only time she remembered hearing it was after the shooting. Those days seemed so distant and far away now but not at all less adverse.

"I don't mean to intrude I just, just needed to be somewhere familiar. Everything feels so different now."

There was a sudden swathe of silence surrounding them and a burning desire accompanying it. There was no denying that their flame was still burning but no one bothered to go near it because neither wanted to get burned again.

"Don't you miss it, Brooke? All of it?"

Staring out at the vacant rivercourt, all Brooke could do was shrug. There she was, beside the man she once thought she was going to marry, gazing out at the place that made everything better. The place that illuminated the dark North Carolina sky even when the clouds refused to let the moon shine down on the small town of Tree Hill. She was too numb to move, to speak even – partly from the cold and partly from the throbbing anxiousness caused by the letter she had tucked away.

"Shh. You'll ruin it."

Trying her best to hold back tears, Brooke tugged her lips into a helpless smile that caused perfectly round indentations in her porcelain cheeks and glanced up at Lucas for only a mere second before her eyes reclaimed the darkened horizon before the two of them.


End file.
